Namita Wahi

S.J.D. Candidate

Byse Teaching Fellow

“The Tension between Property Rights and Socioeconomic Rights: A Constitutional and Comparative Analysis”

Graduate Student Associate, South Asia Initiative

nwahi at sjd.law.harvard.edu

Dissertation

The Right to Property and Economic Development in India

My dissertation examines how the Indian Supreme Court has, over the last sixty years, managed tensions between the right to property and the state’s power to acquire property for the purposes of redistribution and economic development. Conventional scholarly accounts have labelled the Court as reactionary or progressive by focusing attention on the kinds of rights that the Court has enforced during different periods, namely, property rights and socio-economic rights respectively. In contrast, I argue that the Court’s enforcement of particular rights has been determined less by the kind of right sought to be enforced and more by whether the Court sees the enforcement of that right as hindering/enhancing economic development goals. These development goals have in turn been conceptualized within a fluid and transnational “development” discourse shaped by the interactions between development theorists, and third world and international development advisors.

Fields of Research and Supervisors

Legal and Social Theory, with Professor Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School, Overall Faculty Supervisor
Constitutional Theory and Comparative Constitutional Law , with Professor Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School
Political Philosophy with Professor Richard Tuck, Department of Government, Harvard University

Additional Research Interests

International Law
Law and Development
Property Law
Legal History

Education

Harvard Law School, S.J.D. Candidate, 2008 - Present
Harvard Law School, LL.M., 2005
National Law School of India University, Bangalore, B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), 2004

Academic Appointments and Fellowships

Harvard Law School, 2011-2012, Teaching Fellow, Perspectives on American Law
Harvard Law School, 2008-2012, Advisor, Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition
Harvard Law School, 2008-2010; 2011-2012, Graduate Program Fellow, LL.M. Writing Workshop
Harvard Law School, 2010-2011, Graduate Program Fellow, LL.M. Advisor
Teaching Fellow, Fall 2009, Gov 1255: Politics of India, Harvard College
Harvard Law School, Spring 2008, Graduate Program Fellow, Section Leader, Constitutional Law : First Amendment Course

Representative Publications

“India: Citizens, Courts and the Right to Health; Between Promise and Progress?” Litigating Health Rights: Can Courts Bring More Justice to Health (Harvard University Press, 2011) (coauthored with Sharanjeet Parmar)
“Human Rights accountability of the IMF and the World Bank: A critique of existing mechanisms and articulation of a theory of horizontal accountability”, 12 U.C. Davis J. Int’l L. & Pol’y 331 (2006)
“Inter-generational equity and Intra-generational equity”, 4 I.J.E.L.42 (2003)
“The Right to Self-Determination in International Law: A Comparative study of Bangladesh & Nagaland”, 2 Soc Adv 94 (2001)

Additional Information

Languages: English

Last Updated: November 6, 2012